The Shift from Conflict Avoidance to Intimacy - My Interview with RRA Graduate Serena Arora

In early 2023, I was joined on my Podcast by RRA graduate Serena Arora. She shared the essential skills she learned it takes to sustain a healthy, fulfilling relationship.

Here are some of the highlights from my interview with her. Enjoy!

Meleah: I'm curious to hear you speak a little bit more to the time leading up before you started Radiant Relationship Academy and what those past relationships were like.

Serena: I had replicated my parents' relationship in my marriage. So we were together for 12 years before we got married, and then we were married for three years. But during that time, I believe that I was very unaware.

There was very little communication, not a lot of attention on emotional body, emotions, feelings. Communication was not... I didn't learn to communicate my feelings. It was very like, “Suck it up”.

I learned also that I was very unskilled. And it was interesting because I look back and being unskilled, especially in an Asian family… Oh, my gosh, that is the biggest failure. The whole thing is about being skilled, get skills and be educated so that you can be successful in life. And so I remember being in this couples workshop with my husband at the time, and the therapist was describing our situation and saying some of the things that I did or my behaviors. And she goes, “Okay, well, that's just unskilled”. And my jaw dropped. I was in such denial about who I was and how I was showing up. And I just didn't know. I was unaware. Looking back, I really was unskilled. I didn't have skills to see it, to communicate it. So I just replicated [what I learned in childhood]. I just said what I wanted to say. There was no apology. There was no processing of “What happened?”. And it got to the point where it was irreparable and damaged. We couldn't be together anymore. There was too much hurt and too many things that were said that couldn't be unsaid or undone.

Meleah: So when you made the decision to choose your match, that's a very conscious decision that we come to, saying “I'm done choosing from this place. I want my match”. When you stepped into relationship with Kevin, did you find that it was more vulnerable to meet someone in that way?

Serena: Yes. And how that brought up a lot of fear because now I'm vulnerable. I was telling you, I lived in my head a lot. But this… It was like my body was telling me, yes, this is right. And so now I had more to lose.

Meleah: I'd love for you to share a little bit more there on how you knew it was the right time to do Radiant Relationship Academy.

Serena: I definitely was in this healthy relationship. I knew it was worth me doing some work on myself to be able to sustain the healthy relationship because life is not perfect. It's challenging. And I noticed what was going on was that we were having almost monthly breakdowns. So everything would be good, and then all of a sudden, something would trigger me, or I would trigger him, or something would happen. And it was like the floor just fell out underneath me. And it would just be like, we were triggered in our own way, and we just missed each other. We were miscommunicating. We just didn't quite land our words or our intentions weren't landing. What I noticed was that the gaps in our relationship were getting bigger. Like these holes in the fabric of our relationship started growing. And I didn't have, I feel like I really didn't have the skill and the capacity at that time to process the conflict. And my motto was get out, avoid.

I noticed that if I didn't do something soon to repair the damage, then I was going to replicate what had happened in my marriage, that the gaps and the holes in the fabric of our relationship would get too big and irreparable. And I was hell-bent on not repeating the same mistakes in my marriage in this amazing relationship that I had. So for RRA, I was just like, okay, I need to learn how to communicate. I need to learn how to regulate. When I'm triggered and when I'm feeling that this isn't the right or it doesn't feel good to me, how can I start to see it as he's not against me and not be reactive? And how can I start to learn how to be more responsive? So I knew all this stuff in my head, but I just couldn't do it and get it out of me.

And when I saw you… The feminine embodied wisdom that just exuded from your pores, you were so embodied in that. I was like, that's what I need. That's what I want. And that's who I want to become. And so that was just the inspiration for me. I was like, this is time. And I knew that if I didn't do it now, I would lose this relationship.

Meleah: You talked about both of you getting triggered a lot by each other. Can you speak about how you saw that begin to change during RRA and how that is for you now and what's been really helpful for you there?

Serena: I noticed that... I'd be triggered, we'd both be triggered, or just me and I would shut down. Then he would attempt to speak to me about it, start to repair it in some ways, and we would just end up being farther and farther apart.

What I started applying from RRA was this self-regulation. So it's not necessarily asking him to co-regulate with me, but I got to self-regulate. I get to co-regulate with my own [inner] little girl, really, who was coming out and being triggered. It was like, Okay, you know what? You're not being attacked. You are not unsafe here. There was so much that I was noticing that I would not... Instead of react, I would just actually sit with it. I would think about what I said, Okay, this is an opportunity. And I started actually voicing my process. And so it was very subtle. It was subtle and scary, I think, both at the same time. So it was like, Okay, I'm going to start voicing my process.

I'm feeling this. And it was so clunky at first. I felt like it was like Bambi trying to walk and fall. And it was messy. Actually, I asked him for that. I was like, Look, I really want to learn. I want to repair this. I want to come out feeling closer to you. And so it's going to be bear with me thing. I'm feeling like this is messy, but I'm going to try.

At first, I would get triggered. I would shut down, and all my old stuff would come in, and I knew it was happening. I was just totally aware, sitting there in the car, looking at the window like, this is happening. You're being triggered. You're showing up as a little girl. So the awareness is first step. And then I started just saying it like, I'm feeling this, and I'm noticing XYZ about me. And I just kept letting him in on my experience. And so that really started to take off. I got lots of opportunities to practice that. And so I would just speak to it.

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I was so happy to have Serena on the podcast. If you want to listen to the whole interview (which I would strongly suggest) you can listen to this episode here.

And you can also join the waitlist for Radiant Relationship Academy here.